# Cabinet humidor sealing, setup, seasoning *** PIC HEAVY ***



## Yukoner (Sep 22, 2016)

*** NOTICE - This thread is VERY picture heavy ***

Hi fellow Puff'ers. So, as you may know, a few months back I had a fight with an end table humidor cabinet (that thread is here and is a good precursor to this one: http://www.cigarforums.net/forums/vb/cigar-accessory-discussion/232634-humidor-leaking-humidity.html ). Once I won that fight, I realized very quickly that this cabinet was far too small to meet my needs. Anticipating that, I went ahead and ordered a Tower 2000 cabinet humidor, figuring that would meet my needs for quite some time to come. Well, that's a topic for a different thread&#8230;&#8230;

Anyways, because of where I live, it's EXTREMELY expensive to ship things to me. This humidor came in around $500.00 JUST for shipping once all was said and done, and it was already in Canada before it came to me. I looked into American hand-made humidors, but the cost to ship a cabinet was going to be much more. My plan, ultimately, is to have a larger cabinet that is custom made, but that is going to be an extremely expensive piece of furniture. Actually, I will then call it an heirloom that will be passed down in the family when my time on the planet is up. Until such a time however, I am stuck with getting a Chinese-made cabinet, which as we all know can really suck for sealing properly and holding humidity. Before I even attempted any kind of seasoning with this beast, I took the lessons learned from my end table fiasco and applied them here, so I could prep this cabinet correctly and avoid losing my mind on it.

Here is the humidor unpacked, without alteration, sitting in my home. Let's begin !










First thing was to evaluate all the trays and shelves. As expected, the tooling was not very good or precise. As can be seen below, there was a lot of "frayed hair" wood that needed to be sanded down and removed.




























Ugh, and then we find that some of the Spanish cedar has sweated resin / sap. OK, I had heard that this stuff was hard as a rock, but you don't realize HOW hard until you try and remove it. I tried just using a plastic razor blade at first. Ha ! Not a chance. I then tried a metal razor blade, which gave me limited success. Ultimately, it was smoothed down and made level with the wood using an abrasive sandpaper sponge. 200 grit if I remember correctly. And it took a good amount of time.



















Now we move onto the "fun" part, silicone sealing. This humidor, like all other Chinese ones I've seen, is poorly joined at the corners and seams. This resulted in gaps where humidity would most definitely leak out if not addressed and rectified. Having had excellent success with the aforementioned end table cabinet humidor, I went ahead and picked up some additional aquarium-safe silicone and went to work.


















































































One finished, I left the cabinet alone for over a week, door fully open, to let the silicone completely cure and for all odours to have dissipated. Now onto the final part, weather stripping ! As you can see in the images below, I wasn't able to get a full seal around the entire door as I was hoping for. The door's retaining mechanism got in the way, as did the drawers of the cabinet (if I had put the weather stripping where the drawers were, it would have obstructed the drawers from opening).














































Here we go, hopefully all sealed up and ready for seasoning ! It is important to note that for this cabinet, I chose *NOT* to silicone the door glass. I evaluated the door and, in all likelihood, it needed to be sealed. That being said, the aesthetics of a humidor are important to me. This is a prominent piece of furniture in the household and it has to look as presentable as possible (also required for the "wife factor"  ). The way the cedar lining is on the door, it would have been difficult to apply silicone cleanly without it being very visible from the outside. As such, I chose not to silicone the glass door, also taking into account that I would be using both active as well as passive humidification for this cabinet.










Next up, we prep the Heartfelt beads (65% RH). I took a decorative glass dish and filled it with beads. This is ~1 lbs of beads, which is not enough for this humidor normally but again, this is just the seasoning process.



















The following images show 7 days worth of passive seasoning. In the cabinet I've got a dish of Distilled Water (DW), my dish of beads and a hygrometer. Important to note, this hygrometer is an el-cheapo from Walmart. It is NOT accurate, however all we care about is the differential day to day, not necessarily the exact precise RH. In other words, I need to see if RH is going up. Whether 51% should really be 55% is not really that relevant at this point in time


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## Yukoner (Sep 22, 2016)

RH pretty much stabilized at this point and wouldn't really go much higher, despite leaving it for several more days. I decided it was time to add some active humidification to continue the seasoning process. For active humidification, I chose to go with the Cigar Oasis Magna 2.0 electronic humidifier. My first experience went well with Cigar Oasis (I have a Cigar Oasis Plus for my end table humidor), so I decided to continue on that experience. The first thing I'll say is that the Cigar Oasis (CO) Magna 2.0 is a much more "serious" humidifier than the CO Plus. I will likely do a completely separate thread on just the CO Magna 2.0, but without going into all the details, this electronic humidifier means business. It has a very nice LED remote that plugs into the main unit, and something that is REALLY handy is that is has a power output on the remote that can power auxiliary fans. Anyone that has wired up a cabinet humidor knows what I mean when I say this feature is REALLY handy. For anyone considering a cabinet of this size, I highly recommend getting fans. I actually had to add even more fans, which I'll talk about further down. Anyways, I unpacked the new CO Magna 2.0 and got it ready.










The CO Magna 2.0 uses its own humidity beads instead of just water in its tank. I presumed these beads were similar to Heartfelt beads, so you can imagine my surprise when I opened the package and there were so few, when compared to the size of the water tank.










Here they are after I put them into the water tank.










Skeptical, I followed the instructions and filled the tank up to the fill line with water. The instructions said the beads would soak up the majority of the water within 24 hours. Yeah, OK, sureeeeeee they will. Those few beads will soak up ALL the water I just put in. Uh huh. Well, I left it for about an hour and came back. Here's what it looked like:










OK, so the beads expanded a bit. But there's still mostly water in there. But fine, it had only been an hour after all. I left the house for about 2 hours to run some errands, and came back to this:










WOW ! These are DEFINITELY nothing like Heartfelt beads. I couldn't resist the urge to touch one of them and see what they felt like. They're kind of spongy, not hard at all. Very strange feeling, and very strange looking given that I know what they looked like beforehand. OK, well let's get it into the humidor and keep on seasoning !

Here we are with the CO Magna 2.0's remote installed, all the wiring routed, auxiliary fans mounted, and another 1 lbs of Heartfelt beads put into another glass dish:




























All closed up and running, it only took just over a day to get a steady, stable 72% RH. I eventually brought this up to 77% RH and then let it go down from there.










Here I ran into a problem. While I was keeping a solid, steady 72% RH at the half-way height of the cabinet, the bottom shelf under the drawers wasn't fairing so well:










Through discussion on another thread I started right here on Puff, a BOTL came to the rescue and told me that I needed fans to push humidity vertically up. Simply put, I didn't have enough airflow within the cabinet, so humidity was not being distributed evenly. I first tried a variable speed fan from AC Infinity. Again, I'll do another thread reviewing AC Infinity fans, but short version is that they are AWESOME. The build quality is extremely high, and they are made of either high grade heavy duty plastic or aluminum. It's been a long time since I've seen an aluminum cased computer fan, so that really surprised me. Yes, AC Infinity fans do cost more, but as with everything, you get what you pay for.










While this is a really great fan and my personal favourite due to its aluminum construction, it puts out much more CFM of air than I needed. And if I put it on the very lowest setting, it seemed to have trouble with that, going extremely slow and then speeding up and then slowing down again. I presume that the very lowest setting isn't providing enough electrical current to have the fan spin at a stable RPM. Anyways, I chose to try out a different model of fan from AC Infinity, this one being made of heavy duty plastic. This one has three speed settings, LO, MED, HI. Even on high, the CFM of air is not as high as the previous fan. And it was actually a lot quieter as well, which is important based on where my humidor physically lives. This fan came as a set, so I have two of them in the cabinet, one right below the other. I also decided to add a timer to the fans so they don't run 24/7, but complete an on / off cycle. I have them running for 30min at a time, with a 90min break in-between.



















And finally, the day came to load up the cabinet with its prized possessions ! Here is what it looks like now. I have also come to the realization that I am running out of room&#8230;.. again&#8230;&#8230;










And here are the humidity readings, starting on the top shelf, middle shelf and bottom shelf below the drawers. Three days after taking these pictures things have changed a bit, 62% on the top shelf, 65% in the middle and 71% on the lower due to the CO Magna 2.0 cycling on a little more than before. I presume a bit of stabilizing will have to take place over the next few weeks, so I'm not TOO concerned about it, but I may adjust my fan timer cycles to compensate. I'm also considering whether to add more fans or not.




























And the final picture, the very bottom of the cabinet where all the humidification goodies are. Just for those who are curious. You'll notice my Cigar Oasis WiFi module down there (it has a red LED on it). This add-on is something I debated somewhat, but now that I do have it, I don't know what I would do without it. The ability to adjust, monitor and see historical data on RH through an app on my smartphone or through a web browser on any computer is such a handy thing. It takes a LOT of stress off my shoulders with having to remember to constantly check the cabinet when I'm at home. I'll probably do yet another thread just on this WiFi attachment, but I definitely give it a huge thumbs up.










In conclusion, so far, I'd say this cabinet has been a success. I started this entire process near the end of October, 2016, and I did not put a single cigar in it until January, 2017. Yes, it took over 2 months to prep, season and adjust my tactics before being able to use this cabinet. I probably could have shortened that up a bit, but the point I'm trying to get across is that you need to have a lot of patience with this hobby / obsession. You can't rush things, and if you try to, it might not end up the way you want. I'd like to thank all the B/S OTL who gave me advice directly and who have given advice in other threads. Without the collective knowledge of this community, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to season this cabinet properly and I'd have been fighting with it indefinitely. Hopefully this thread can help someone else out in the future


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## bozoo (Sep 26, 2016)

Now that is an awesome job!


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## n0s4atu (Apr 24, 2016)

Nice job and that looks like great bang for the buck. Good looking humidor and with the lessons you learned on the smaller one you sealed I bet this one will really hold humidity well.


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## Jc5611 (Dec 26, 2016)

This is why you're my go-to expert :wink2:

Nice job. Good luck with it. Looks great!


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## scott1256ca (Jan 4, 2017)

You might be interested in this article on silica gel vs. superabsorbent polymers
Humidity Beads vs. Superabsorbent Polymers
The SA polymers swell a lot in size. silica gel doesn't. Also there is a summary that states that silica gel is better at dehumidifying and the SA polymers are better at humidifying. So in the Yukon, I'd think the SA polymer you have is much the better choice.

Good job on the humidor. Did you consider putting the weather stripping on the door instead of the cabinet? I can't really tell from the pics if that would have solved the problem of getting in the way of the drawers or not.


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## Yukoner (Sep 22, 2016)

bozoo said:


> Now that is an awesome job!


TY sir.



n0s4atu said:


> Nice job and that looks like great bang for the buck. Good looking humidor and with the lessons you learned on the smaller one you sealed I bet this one will really hold humidity well.


Thanks, and yes, the lessons learned from the smaller cabinet definitely helped with this a lot.



Jc5611 said:


> This is why you're my go-to expert :wink2:
> 
> Nice job. Good luck with it. Looks great!


lol, lots of folks on the forum have much more experience (in terms of time) than I do. But I do try to help out with what I've learned as much as possible. I'm waiting with anticipation to see how yours turns out !



scott1256ca said:


> You might be interested in this article on silica gel vs. superabsorbent polymers
> Humidity Beads vs. Superabsorbent Polymers
> The SA polymers swell a lot in size. silica gel doesn't. Also there is a summary that states that silica gel is better at dehumidifying and the SA polymers are better at humidifying. So in the Yukon, I'd think the SA polymer you have is much the better choice.
> 
> Good job on the humidor. Did you consider putting the weather stripping on the door instead of the cabinet? I can't really tell from the pics if that would have solved the problem of getting in the way of the drawers or not.


Interesting ! I did read that these beads aren't meant for absorbing humidity, which is why the CO Magna 2.0 has those plastic flaps to try and "seal" the water tank when the CO isn't actively humidifying.

I did consider weather stripping the cabinet door instead, but the shelves would have gotten in the way of the door closing tightly. It's the same reason my Western Caliber IV isn't attached to the front of one of the shelves (I did attempt this but when the door was closed, the glass was pushing on the buttons on the front of the hygrometer).


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## veteranvmb (Aug 6, 2009)

All I can say is wow. Thanks for all the photos and explanations. I think with all your "modifications" that cabinet will continue to give you much joy for years. 
When I started to purchase cabinets for my cigars in the seventies(I have four cabinets) I didnt have a lot of money. I noticed a lot of what we called candy stores or stationery stores in new york, had cigar cabinets, that either they werent using anymore, or storing sundries in it, such as light bulbs and batteries and pens etc. 
some of the owners didnt even know they were humidors at one time, with the majority of owners being from other countries. With cigar use being way down after world war 2 to cigarette consumption. 
I started going to various candy stores over the course of ten years, of stores that no longer stocked hand made cigars or going out of business and made offers on the cabinets. 
They were happy to get rid of them, for not too much money. These cigar cabinets were all american made and solid to last for decades and decades and in really good shape. With not too much work, I had them all functioning to great precision. They smell great and continue to be of great use, because of their age. The only adjustment, was I went to heartfelt beads with fans about 7 or 8 years ago. 
Anyone who wants a cabinet, should try and see whats still out there, before they are all used as trash and firewood. Nothing like the cheap foreign made cabinets. Sometimes old is better
Much regards Jerry


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## Yukoner (Sep 22, 2016)

veteranvmb said:


> All I can say is wow. Thanks for all the photos and explanations. I think with all your "modifications" that cabinet will continue to give you much joy for years.
> When I started to purchase cabinets for my cigars in the seventies(I have four cabinets) I didnt have a lot of money. I noticed a lot of what we called candy stores or stationery stores in new york, had cigar cabinets, that either they werent using anymore, or storing sundries in it, such as light bulbs and batteries and pens etc.
> some of the owners didnt even know they were humidors at one time, with the majority of owners being from other countries. With cigar use being way down after world war 2 to cigarette consumption.
> I started going to various candy stores over the course of ten years, of stores that no longer stocked hand made cigars or going out of business and made offers on the cabinets.
> ...


Wow, that's an awesome story ! And definitely a smart way to get into the cabinet game without having to mortgage the house a second time. I'll definitely echo that handmade American humidors likely hold no comparison at all to these Chinese made crap-a-dors. Unfortunately for me, shipping is the biggest hurdle to buying a custom made cabinet  One day though, one day...... That day may be sooner than later due to my every expanding collection !


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## Yukoner (Sep 22, 2016)

Below is a screenshot of my first week after getting the Cigar Oasis Magna 2.0 fired up. It shows both humidity changes as well as temperature changes.

The temperature swings you see are due to the humidor being physically in my basement where my thermostat is programmed to keep it warmer during the day and cooler at night. I'm set to 65 degrees F during the day and 60.5 F at night. Obviously things are a bit warmer inside my humidor, which is interesting. Almost like the humidor has a bit of insulation factor.


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## Vallac (Jul 16, 2016)

WOW!!! Great job and great read, thank you!!!


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## Yukoner (Sep 22, 2016)

Vallac said:


> WOW!!! Great job and great read, thank you!!!


Thanks ! Again, hoping it will help out some n00bs just joining the slippery slope :grin2:


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## Vallac (Jul 16, 2016)

Yukoner said:


> Thanks ! Again, hoping it will help out some n00bs just joining the slippery slope :grin2:


I need to upgrade my humidor, but it wont be anything as big or fancy as yours...I have a 30 count at the moment (I only recently started storing cigars) and I've filled it, so I think its time to upgrade to a 100 count. Problem is the wife .....


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## Yukoner (Sep 22, 2016)

Vallac said:


> I need to upgrade my humidor, but it wont be anything as big or fancy as yours...I have a 30 count at the moment (I only recently started storing cigars) and I've filled it, so I think its time to upgrade to a 100 count. Problem is the wife .....


Ah yes, the wife equation. Most people don't realize how important the wife's blessing is when trying to do anything like this. If it helps, I can give her my wife's e-mail address and she can at least feel relieved that other wives exist that also want to pull their hair out at their husbands :grin2:

An update for the cabinet - I added two more of the AC Infinity fans. I wanted to try and get a stronger airflow pushing humidity upwards. So I now have 2 fans on the very bottom next to the CO, and 2 more on the shelf right above, both directly above the fans below (so they are lined up, one is pushing air up and the one above it is taking that directional air and pushing it again). I'll post pictures when I get back home.


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## Cigarer (Apr 12, 2014)

Nice write up. Glad you posted this, I'm looking at more storage. How much do you have wrapped up in this?


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## Vallac (Jul 16, 2016)

Yukoner said:


> Ah yes, the wife equation. Most people don't realize how important the wife's blessing is when trying to do anything like this. If it helps, I can give her my wife's e-mail address and she can at least feel relieved that other wives exist that also want to pull their hair out at their husbands :grin2:


When I bought my humidor, the agreement was to buy a stick a month and slowly build up my collection .... yeah, it didn't really happen that way ... I'm sick and addicted like the rest of you:vs_laugh:


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## Yukoner (Sep 22, 2016)

Cigarer said:


> Nice write up. Glad you posted this, I'm looking at more storage. How much do you have wrapped up in this?


Dollar-wise ? Well, the humidor itself was ~$1,200.00 CDN, plus shipping, plus all the accessories like the CO Magna 2.0, beads, hygrometers, etc. Keep in mind a few things though. First, I'm in Canada, and second I'm in the Yukon (on the Canadian side of Alaska), so shipping ANYTHING to me cost an arm and a leg. What I've got invested into this is situational to where I live. I would anticipate that you could replicate exactly what I did at half the cost if you lived in, say, California. I didn't put any cost figures into my original post because for what I paid into this, you could easily buy an Avallo or Aristocrat if you lived in the lower 48. Again, all situational because of where I live :smile2:



Vallac said:


> When I bought my humidor, the agreement was to buy a stick a month and slowly build up my collection .... yeah, it didn't really happen that way ... I'm sick and addicted like the rest of you:vs_laugh:


"Don't worry hun, this cabinet will last me for a long time to come". Literally 2 months after getting it: "Soooooooooooo, hun, I'm out of space....." :grin2:


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## Yukoner (Sep 22, 2016)

UPDATE !

The weather has finally turned warm up north and we're seeing +20 C days (~ 70 F). Since it's been warmer, I've noticed a dramatic change in the cabinet's ability to hold RH. I'm now fighting with RH that's almost too high (~ 68%), as opposed to the opposite where I was watering 3 lbs of beads every few days. It will be interesting to see how this progresses throughout the summer.


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## scott1256ca (Jan 4, 2017)

Are you saying even after you sealed and seasoned this, you still had to add water every few days?


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## Yukoner (Sep 22, 2016)

scott1256ca said:


> Are you saying even after you sealed and seasoned this, you still had to add water every few days?


To the beads, yes. This was during winter when the ambient RH in the room was less than 20%. When it dips down to -40 degrees in the winter, the cold literally PULLS all the humidity from inside a home, outwards. This is why we get frost around windows, doors, etc. Now that it is summertime and the ambient RH is closer to 45%, it seems to be losing a lot less RH.


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## scott1256ca (Jan 4, 2017)

Yeah, in Edmonton in the winter I can keep my house humidifier up over 30%. I risk frost build up on the really cold days. In the Yukon I'd expect it to be lower, but 20% is pretty low. Given the size of your humidor, I thought it would lose humidity faster than some 100 ct desktop, but having to add water every few days struck me as awfully frequent.


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## Yukoner (Sep 22, 2016)

scott1256ca said:


> Yeah, in Edmonton in the winter I can keep my house humidifier up over 30%. I risk frost build up on the really cold days. In the Yukon I'd expect it to be lower, but 20% is pretty low. Given the size of your humidor, I thought it would lose humidity faster than some 100 ct desktop, but having to add water every few days struck me as awfully frequent.


The humidor, despite all the work done to it, still isn't completely airtight. I doubt it ever will be. In the end, it's still a piece of Chinese crap :frown2: I can live with it the way it is though, it's holding enough RH that it's stable, as long as I keep up with watering the beads. That being said, I haven't touched it in over a week now and the RH isn't dropping drastically, which is a refreshing change.

Also, I don't know how accurate hygrometers are when you get down to really low RH readings. I've seen 17% before but I don't know if I trust that. Could have been less in reality.


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## ghe-cl (Apr 9, 2005)

An incredible job on the humidor but an even more incredible job sharing your work, experience and knowledge. Thanks!


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## Yukoner (Sep 22, 2016)

ghe said:


> An incredible job on the humidor but an even more incredible job sharing your work, experience and knowledge. Thanks!


Thank you. My intent was to give as much detail as possible, so someone who may be new to the Chinese-made humidors could do some prep work before trying to season and use theirs. It's a lot more satisfying and less stressful if you can do prep work vs loading you stash in there, then removing it so you can do work, then putting it back in.


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## e.walz18 (Jun 6, 2017)

Wow, i really have commend you on your process with all of this. You knew exactly what you were doing the entire time and this really showed in the results of the process. I have only one question for you. Did you look into static pressure fans? I build high end PC's and I use static pressure (SP) instead of the more common air flow (AF) fans when there is some type of obstruction such as a liquid cooling radiator or limited space due to the case itself. If trying to place fans so that you had the best circulation of humidity I would assume they would be placed in tight places and therefore having a harder time drawing in air to move through. Just to be overly clear, I am not an expert in humidors and all of this so I am merely asking a question and not criticizing anything you have done. I am accustomed to dealing with situations where I am looking to expel heat and draw in cool air not circulating air to equalize the humidity within a confined volume. The one thing I do understand is the notion of taking great care constructing something that ends up valuing in the thousands not hundreds. My personal PC build ended up costing about $3500 and is my prized possession to be honest. I even invested in a massive battery backup that would save my build from power outages and then followed that battery backup with a very expensive surge protector even though there is one within the battery backup. So, what I am getting at is I fully understand taking care of your passion. I am just getting into the wonderful hobby and passion that is cigar smoking and am now looking into my own cabinet sized humidor. I am browsing forums looking for information and this is one of the best I have seen so far. So, if you have any advice for me I would really appreciate you imparting your wisdom upon me. Just as it is with PC components, humidors and smoking accessories have varying degrees of quality and efficacy. While dealing with collections of cigars in the realms of valuing $2000+ I believe it is necessary to take as great of care as you have.


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## Jerry T (Jan 21, 2019)

Great story I have done the same thing and like you said hobby/ obsession......... that's true hahaha it's a lot of fun to keep an eye on the humidity and experiment with different ways to keep the top middle and bottom of the humidor relative to each other. Every morning when I get up and walk past the cabinet I always check the babies to see how they're doing hahaha thanks again it was a great threat


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